Reprints: Easy or Hard Sell?
Reprints are a great way to get extra mileage (and maybe a little extra cash) out of your stories, and there are a lot of markets that take them, even some that prefer them. But are they easier or more difficult to sell/place than standard story submissions? I think a lot of that depends on the publisher, but let’s see if we can’t dig a little a deeper and put some numbers on the question.
What follows is a list of all my reprints submissions and their outcome. I send out a reasonable amount of reprint submissions, though it’s still a drop in the bucket compared to my normal subs. So, this is the very definition of sample size, but let’s see if the numbers show us anything.
| Story | Submissions | Rejections | Acceptances | Pending |
| Beyond the Block | 2 | 2 | ||
| Big Problems | 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| Caroline | 4 | 4 | ||
| Masks | 1 | 1 | ||
| Night Games | 1 | 1 | ||
| Night Walk | 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| One Last Spell, My Love | 4 | 4 | ||
| Paint-Eater | 1 | 1 | ||
| Paper Cut | 2 | 2 | ||
| Scare Tactics | 2 | 2 | ||
| Shadow Can | 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| The Father of Terror | 3 | 2 | 1 | |
| The Food Bank | 1 | 1 | ||
| The Rarest Cut | 1 | 1 | ||
| The Sitting Room | 1 | 1 | ||
| Time Waits for One Man | 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| Where They Belong | 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| Total | 33 | 21 | 9 | 3 |
I’ve sent 33 reprint submissions over the last eight years or so, and I received 9 acceptances. That’s an acceptance rate of around 27%, which is higher than my overall acceptance rate of 16%. Again, this is a small sample of my overall submissions, but I do seem to have fairly good luck with reprints. Why is that? I can think of two possible reasons.
- Publisher confidence. A reprint says something that a standard submission doesn’t. It says another editor/publisher liked this story enough to publish it. That might hold some small weight with some editors, especially if the reprint’s original publisher is one the current market recognizes and has similar taste/style. I said small weight because the reprint story still has to be a good fit for the new publisher, and, in fact, some publishers might give less consideration to reprints simply out of a desire to publish more original work.
- Reprint-friendly markets. There are certain publishers, primarily audio markets and anthologies, that seem to be more disposed to the reprint or even prefer them. Five of my reprint acceptances are with publishers I’d consider reprint-friendly, and I generally try to target these markets with my reprint submissions.
Reprints still live and die by two unwavering truths of submissions and publishing. One, you have to put the right story in front of the right editor at the right time, and, two, good stories (and reprints can likely lay claim to that title more than general submissions) still get rejected all the time. That said, in my experience, they are a bit easier to sell, and a reprint acceptance can be a welcome infusion of confidence and allow you to crack new markets and reach new readers. So get ’em out there.
What are your experience with reprints? Easier to sell? Harder? Tell me about it in the comments.
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Aeryn Rudel's Rejectomancy 